dp
Posted a lot
DP Race Tech
Posts: 1,044
|
|
|
gtvsaviour in da house: Anyone know if the DeLorean owners club found that field with 'em all buried in it? Typical gov. reaction instead of selling 'em off to recoup some of the fraud money - they put 'em in a disused quarry and filled it in!Is that really true or just a story? As far as I know a bunch of the sieced cars were put on sale in Los Angeles, a friend picked up one for $8.888, they were sold by the IRS at a set price, first come first serve and there were a load of cars up for sale, so many the sale had do be advertized publicly to get all cars sold..... DP says: I later bought my friends DMC after the motor died in it but it just sat around and was finally sold off....
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I know that the Delorean body dies were used to anchor nets at a N. Ireland fish farm.
|
|
1972 Fiat 130 1985 Talbot Alpine 1974 Lancia Beta Saloon 1975 + 1986 Mazda 929 Koop + Wagon 1982 Fiat Argenta 2.0 iniezione elettronica 1977 Toyota Carina TA14 BEST CAR EVER!!!!!!!! 1979 Datsun B310 Sunny 4-dr 1984 Audi 200 Quattro Turbo 1983 Honda Accord 1.6 DX GONE1989 Alfa 75 2.0 TS Mr T says: TREAT YO MOTHER RIGHT!
|
|
DutyFreeSaviour
Europe
Back For More heartbreak and disappointment.....
Posts: 2,944
|
|
|
As far as I know it's a true one!
Could contact the club to confirm I suppose.
I have an old PC mag with a follow up on it - but admit I've never investigated..........
Treasure hunt anyone??? ;D
|
|
Back from the dead..... kind of
|
|
|
Your favourite failureRobinxr4i
@robinxr4i
Club Retro Rides Member 143
|
|
Yes, count me in on this one, all the ones i'm thinking of ATM sold ok, mainly the BL catalogue. Having never owned an Allegro, Princess, Marina, Maxi, Ital, Maestro, Montego, Metro, I do feel a bit naive liking em and wanting em on my own oneday list!!! Suppose the sierra was a failure at first but hit its peak with the sporty ones Even the Back To The Future films could not save its total poo-ness!
|
|
Sierra - here we go again! He has an illness, it's not his fault.
|
|
|
|
|
the delorean could have been a wonderful car... can't entirely blame the big man either, if renault hadn't supplied all the dodgy v6s and given up ones built to the right quality it might have at least moved. but who am i to blame the french for NI's 3rd most famous export???!!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
i was at Xscape on sat early eve - as i was leaving, there parked in front of me was a delorean!
thats the first one ive ever seen outside of a show! it looked so much cooler next to all the modern tat ;D
|
|
|
|
zeus
Part of things
Penguins steal your sanity
Posts: 603
|
|
|
Escort RS 1700t:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chevy Corvair After Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe at any speed" this car was dead in the water. Even though I think the Pontiac Tempest was a worse offender?
|
|
|
|
|
Saru
Part of things
No Brand Loyalty
Posts: 460
|
|
|
Oooh, Ro80's are deeply cool. I see them in the Volksy K70. And Audi 100. Corvairs might have been a failure but that didn't stop them going with a 2nd generation version: I've read that a lot of you don't like the Triumph Stag but I think they're awesome. Perhaps they just need to be saved from the beardies. ;D
|
|
1974 Saab 99 EMSI bought a new car. It's 35 years old. My friends said I was mad. We'll see.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I love Stags too, almost bought a few this summer (not all at the same time, lol) Got the best of both worlds now tho, so not bothered too much. When sorted - Beautiful V8s in them, silky smooth to 7000RPM and make an exhaust note like few others, really are. More powerful and flexible than the equivalent carb'd 3.5 Rover
|
|
Last Edit: Dec 8, 2006 0:01:57 GMT by Lewis
|
|
|
|
|
Anyone know if the DeLorean owners club found that field with 'em all buried in it? Typical gov. reaction instead of selling 'em off to recoup some of the fraud money - they put 'em in a disused quarry and filled it in! Apparently 'top secret' location in Sussex! It wouldn't be the government, it would have been the official reciever. It is common practice (still) to landfill stock to write it off against taxes owing. Vauxhall do it regularly, I used to know a guy who was involved with preparing the inventory for it all. They burried about 200 brand new body shells for Mk2 Cavaliers a while back. You could buy one - for about £3000. The thing is you can write the whole value of the stock off at full book price in one go. If you want to sell the stuff you have to discount it or you'll have it hanging around for years. And if the company is going under or needs the revenue thats no good to you. Its insane but its capitalism.
|
|
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
|
|
|
the delorean could have been a wonderful car... can't entirely blame the big man either, if renault hadn't supplied all the dodgy v6s and given up ones built to the right quality it might have at least moved. but who am I to blame the french for NI's 3rd most famous export???!! According to my mate who is a Delorean owner, the engine is actually a "Volvo Sport" spec unit not a Renault one. The cam, cranks and a few other parts are different. Makes about 5 BHP more than the Renner version in emissions trim and does not suffer the problems which the common Renault version did with cam lobes rounding down etc. Lots of people talk about faults the Deloran supposedly had, but few if any of these people actually own one. My mate now has two in the family LOL. The only fault he had with his really was an AC pump failing. The problems with the Delorean were that it was too expensive and that the execs were on the take. Interestingly enough IIRC fraud was never proven against John Z Delorean when tried in his absence, although Colin Chapman was looking at jail time for his part in the scam but escaped it because he died during the ttrial of Lotus' Chief Financial Officer who was found guilty and did about 3 years for it.
|
|
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
DutyFreeSaviour
Europe
Back For More heartbreak and disappointment.....
Posts: 2,944
|
|
|
That explains it then - but does that mean that anything dug up is treasure trove? hhmmm............
|
|
Back from the dead..... kind of
|
|
|
|
|
Chevy Corvair After Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe at any speed" this car was dead in the water. Even though I think the Pontiac Tempest was a worse offender? Another misconception. Ralf Nader's book "Unsafe at Any Speed" criticised a number of cars, not just the Corvair. Most of his targets were built by GM beacuse of an alleged personal feud between him and one of the GM execs. GM successfully sued Nader for libel. The Corvair sold well for ten years and was a reasonable success for GM. One of the reasons for the fall off in sales in the later years of its production were that the market it was competing in was shrinking - all cars in that class were suffering falling sales - the Muscle Car boom was well under way and the flat 6 engine couldn't cut it against the big block V8s. GM already had several compact cars duking it out for the same market. GM's replacement for the Corvair was the Vega/Monza range (the Monza name comes from the sportier Corvair model) The problem with the Pontiac Tempest (first generation model) was that they had been too clever for their own good once again. They used a rear mounted box (transaxle) to achieve decent weight distribution to make it a well handling car, then decided to use a "flexible prop shaft" which was intended to reduce harmonics (due to the prop spinning at engine speed). However the flexiprop caused all manner of transmission failures and this design feature was quickly dropped. The Tempest also used an odd 4 cylinder motor as its base engine which was basically just a 389 cut in half. Half a V8 does not necessarily make a great 4 pot... Once again this did not survive past the first generation cars.
|
|
Last Edit: Dec 8, 2006 13:09:16 GMT by akku
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
|
|
|
the sideways half or longways half
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chevy Corvair After Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe at any speed" this car was dead in the water. Even though I think the Pontiac Tempest was a worse offender? Another misconception. You think? I don't believe it ever recovered from Nader's onslaught, when GM improved the rear suspension to semi trailing arms instead of swing axles Nader said that was an admission that the car was unsafe in the first place! If he was sitting here right now I'd smack him in the mouth I've never heard about the dwindling market affecting sales, although maybe by the late 60s it was expensive for what you were getting compared to newer cars. It sneaks into the 'failure' camp as a technology dead end for GM though, they never built a rear engined or aircooled car again, and I can't imagine them continuing the name over through different models like they did with the Corvette - a bit like Ford releasing a car today called the Edsel ;D
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Also I'm interested by the idea of "failure".
Some of the cars we have listed are good cars. Its easy for us to use a bit of hindsight and judge things by todays standatds (which is what the compilers of these "worst cars" books do. Also you have to take social, political and economic contraints and circumstances into account.
The Alfasud was a fantastic car. Great design, but marred principally by the use or reconstituted steel stock (the same stuff as used in a lot of Ladas) which rusts badly regardless of what you do to it and is difficult to weld to when making repairs. Ford also used this in the Sierra and Orion for some years production. The Sud saved Alfa. If it wasn;t for the huge cash injection thech the Italian government gave ALfa Romeo for opening a huge new plant to build the volume small car down in the deprived south of Italy then ALfa would have gone bust by the mid 1970s. So it drove brilliantly, set standrads of road holding and performance for its class, saved its manufacturer from going out of business, and is famous to this day and well remembered by anyone who owned one. A failure? I don't think so.
Some failures were good cars but they failed because the company making them failed. The DMC12 was a good car, anyone who's ridden in one or driven one will tell you that. I am telling you that! They are a superb car, like nothing else. The company failed due to cashflow issues brought on by wholesale fraud perpetrated by Lotus Cars who were a partner in the development of the car. Alledgedly John Z DElorean was involved in this fraud but this has not to my knowledge been proven and also goes against a number of key facts. The whole reason JZD set up Delorean motors was to prove a point to GM. He wanted to build a better car than they did in any of their markets and grow the company to rival and "punish" GM. He was already rich and this was about provig he was right and GM were wrong. Thats why he was prepared to get involved in shady finance deals to prop up the ailing company when most sensible people would have called in the recievers.
The ALlegro, Maxi, Princess... well regarded as "failures" but they were all good sellers, they were well designed and very well specified cars. What hurt them was poor build quality and much worse than that what killed them was the ridiculous wars between the unions and the management and the government. The build quality was no worse than Ford or Vauxhall were turning out back then. Maybe if they were better built they could have survived the problems of the industrial relations, maybe if they had better industrial relations the build issue wouldn't have mattered. The cars that really killed BL/Austin-Rover/MG-Rover were the ones which came later...
The Mini as has been mentioned was a commercial failure. BMC lost money on every single one they sold. But then Vauxhall lost money on every car of every model they sold between about 1960 and the late 1970s. Ford also lost money heavily during these years although I don;t think it was on quite the same scale. So the losses of BMC/BL should be looked at in perspective. Bad management and marketting decissions. Not bad cars. Interestingly Ford reverse engineered the MIni when developing the Mk1 Escort to see how BMC could build it and sell it at £400 and make money. They concluded that they couldn't - shame BMC didn't have the same forsight...
The Vauxhall SIgnum is a weird one. I remember a press release or article on it when it was launched and I wondered "whats the point of this then" and the quote from Vauxhall went along the lines of "we have not established what market this car will sell into, but we are convinced that the buyers will find this an attractively priced option". So lets get this right, they introduced a new car without even knowning the market it was going into??? How on earth did they expect to produce any meaningful sales targets on that one then? LOL.
|
|
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
|
|
|
I think, and I've read other opinions printed which influenced me to take that opinion. Sterling Moss was wheeled out by GM to give evidence in the libel case - his evidence was that the Corvair handled as well as any saloon should. Nader's brief was that the car oversteered and that oversteer was dangerous. I have read elsewhere that Nader had originally intended to make the VW Beetle the subject of "Unsafe at Any Speed" for the same reason, but having had some spat with GM he switched to the Corvair instead. Most people, even Corvair fanatics admit that the rear swing axles of the Corvair Mk1 were not as good as the trailing arms of the Mk2, but whether they were actually dangerous? I've seen footage of an early Corvair tucking under on a slalom and it looks pretty scary, but I've seen pics of Mercedes historic rally cars getting the rear wheels out of shpae as bad, and lets not even say "Triumph Herald"... I doubt there is one single cause of the Corvair's end. Some people may well have been put off by Nader's book, regardless of whether he was proven wrong in the courts. Soe may have thought the courts were in the pay of GM. Some may have been pt off by the air cooled engine, by the rear engine layout, but the lack of a V8 engine option, no AC, that sort of thing. Some may just have regarded it as an old design. It was 10 years in roughly the same body at a time when Detroit restyled every car every year... The Monza name lived on, if the Corvair was so "tainted" in public concience then they'd have left that name in the dust. WIkipedia says... The Corvair sold 200,000 units a year for most of its life time (IIRC 1970 sold a mere 35,000 units) and according to a number of sources was one of the most successful cars in sales figures GM turned out in the 1960s. It was not the most profitable because of higher production costs and a bizarre attempt to market it against the VW Beetle as well as the Rambler American put a lid on what they could sell it for and thus crimped margins. The facts are hardly what the reputation would suggest. But thats thew way with a lot of things. Journalists and TV SHows repeat only the salatious gossip and rumours about cars like the Delorean, Corvair, Allegro, etc. and usually about 0.00002% of the things people say about these cars is actually true, but so many journos and TV producers are just to lazy to actually bother to find the facts that they just rehash the myths and everybody believes it because it was in a magazine or on TV. The "Cars The Star" piece on the DeLorean was lies start to finish. I know a guy who was involved in that and will bore anyone to death for hours on how what Quentin Wilson said wasn't what actually happened. But its just another example of how TV panders to prejudice. You don;t have to look far for more examples of that, be it cars or any other subject.
|
|
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
|
|
|
the sideways half or longways half Longways. Perhaps a V4 would have been better? I bet the ballance would have required some work though or is a V4 a 90 degree angle engine?
|
|
1937 Austin Street Rod - 1941 Wolseley Not Rod - 1956 Humber Hawk - 1957 Daimler Conquest - 1966 Buick LeSabre - 1968 Plymouth Sport Fury - 1968 Ford Galaxie - 1969 Ford Country Squire - 1969 Mercury Marquis - 1970 Morris Minor - 1970 Buick Skylark - 1970 Ford Galaxie - 1971 Ford Galaxie - 1976 Continental Mark IV - 1976 Ford Capri - 1976 Rover V8 - 1994 Ford Fiesta
|
|
|